A young man once asked Brother Weeps, “Brother, what is the hardest thing about the spiritual life?”

Brother Weeps thought for a moment and said, “First of all, let’s remember. There is only life. Just one life. The spiritual life is just life lived spiritually, life lived deeply, life lived not as if we were self-made men or self-made women, but as those who know intimately it is Creator Spirit, the Holy One, the Holy Breath, the Ineffable One, the Elusive Presence—take your pick—in whom we live and move and have our being. That’s the starting point. And the first awakening that happens on the heels of wonder, is awe at being itself. Then comes gratefulness.

Now, to your question—the hardest thing. The hardest thing in life or about the spiritual life is not rising before the dawn cracks or the rooster crows, it’s not donning hair shirts or eating wild locusts and honey like John the Baptist or Winnie the Pooh. It’s not engaging in dizzying ascetical practices like praying waist high in a frigid river for hours or fasting for days or practicing self-flagellation (I said self-flagellation not self-flatulation, Brother Peter)—

Those gathered round him laughed, especially Brother Peter.

“—it’s not staying awake during lauds or not gossiping about other community members or the vow of poverty or stilling the mind during prayer or trying to hold a tune while chanting in choir standing next to Brother Innocent.”

They smiled and laughed in unison through their noses like horses snorting in winter.

“The hardest thing about the spiritual life, about life,” said Brother Weeps, “is becoming who we already are in God. It’s simply—and not so simply—being who we are in God. That’s it.”

~ Dan Miller, © 2021. All Rights Reserved.

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